Back to Brief on Iran
… Hard-liners promised a "sweeping clean-up" of Iranian society, describing the students as "bandits and saboteurs" who deserved the death penalty…
Hassan Rouhani, the deputy speaker of parliament, told the rally: "The atmosphere in our society has been dirtied over the past few days. Our revolution needs a sweeping clean-up." Mr. Rouhani said those arrested for damaging property would be tried for "waging war on God" and being "corrupters on earth" - charges that carry the death penalty…
… when the protests got out of hand, Mr. Khatami came down on the side of the clerical establishment, describing the student protest as a "deviation which will be repressed with force and determination".
Mr. Khatami's stance will bitterly
disappoint his supporters... By showing his powerlessness to confront the
establishment, his prestige has taken a huge fall....
Iran Resistance Says Dozens Killed In Protests, Reuters, July 14
BONN - Iran's main exiled opposition group said on Wednesday that dozens of protesters had been killed in violent pro-democracy protests around the country on Tuesday.
"At least 30 were killed in yesterday's (Tuesday's) confrontations in Tehran and we can reckon on dozens more dead in other cities," Mohammad Mohadessin, foreign affairs chief of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, told a news briefing in Bonn.
The council, political wing of the Iraq-based Mujahideen Khalq armed opposition group, has offices in Western cities including London, Washington and Cologne.
Mohadessin said the council's information
was based on reports from supporters inside Iran.
Top Official Vows to Try Protestors As "Counter-Revolutionaries", Agence France Presse, July 14
TEHRAN - Students arrested during the past two days of violent protests will be tried as "counter-revolutionaries," a top official told a pro-regime rally here Wednesday promising a "sweeping clean-up."
Those responsible for violent clashes with the security forces here on Monday and Tuesday are "bandits and saboteurs," said Hassan Rouhani, the deputy speaker of parliament and secretary of Iran's top security body, the Supreme National Security Council.
"Our revolution needs a sweeping clean-up and this will help advance the cause of the regime and the revolution," he told the crowd.
"The atmosphere of our society has been dirtied over the past few days," he said. "Although our revolution has seen this kind of thing before it appears that we need a new cleaning again."
Rouhani warned that those picked up over the past two days would be tried as "counter-revolutionaries" and as "corrupt of the earth." Both charges normally carry the death penalty.
[According to Reuters, witnesses at the march said some 50 youths were loaded into police vans by security forces, including a young women carrying a placard asking: "For what crime were they killed?" The sign was in reference to students reported to have been killed.]
He said that some of those arrested had "… are known members of counter-revolutionary groups."
Hundreds of protestors were arrested Tuesday, many of them detained by thousands of plainclothes Islamic militiamen who patrolled the city center armed with clubs, chains and makeshift weapons.
Rouhani issued a stern warning against
"foreign interference" in the unrest which has rocked the Islamic Republic
and said Tehran would respond to any country supporting the demonstrations.
He warned that Iran would "respond at an opportune time."
Sense of Revolution Has Returned to Tehran, CBS News (Internet Edition), July 14
LONDON - … CBS News Senior European Correspondent Tom Fenton reports that the protests were strikingly similar to those that broke out in Iran during the Islamic revolution, in which Iranian students took to the streets to topple the corrupt regime of the Shah.
But the revolution… has finally run out of steam. In recent years, public resentment has been rising against incompetent rule by mullahs who have grown corrupt in power…
The recent clashes were not the first… but this time, there is the likelihood that things could spin out of control. Students' complaints -- which began with calls for greater freedom -- now include demands that heads roll at the top. Clerical heads.
Even Khatami is under fire. One student leader has said, "We are not going to be satisfied until people at the top resign. Khatami has to do something or resign."…
After a 20-year hiatus, an unmistakable sense of revolution has returned to Tehran.